Two little rants here.

First — I think commercial television is completely untenable. You have to be a hopeless loser to sit and watch the staggering volume of commercials that these companies force down our throats. I turned on CNN yesterday at 12:47pm. There were THREE commercial breaks between 12:47 and 12:58. They would literally do one segment and then go back to commercials. It’s clear that CNN is in the commercial distribution business, not the news business. The only way I can watch CNN is to get 30 minutes behind on my DVR so I can forward through the commercials. Let’s be clear: this is network’s and advertisers’ fault, not viewers. I would sit through commercials if they were less frequent, less long and more informative or entertaining. These 5 minute commercial breaks every few minutes is insane and I don’t feel bad in the slightest that my DVR allows me to circumvent it.

Second — I’m going to pick on Showtime again. I have been waiting a year to be able to legally download season 3 of Weeds. iTunes still doesn’t have it. I downloaded a Showtime plugin for Windows Media Center and I can buy Season 1 and Season 2 but not Season 3. They are advertising Season 4 and nowhere do they ever mention Season 3. It’s like it doesn’t exist.

I can tell what is going on — some agreement was made that every other available channel was going to be exploited before they would sell it online. I can almost see the 65 year old grey haired white male who made this decision. ARE YOU ON FUCKING DRUGS? The fucking world voted and the medium that we turn to for music, movies and TV shows is the Internet. The fact that I can give Amazon $30 for season 3 of Weeds but I can’t give Showtime or Apple $30 is insane. Please, can someone fire the 65 year old grey haired white male who doesn’t understand the world in 2008?

Finally, since I’m on a roll, it boggles my mind the number of news web sites that put pre-roll ads in front of their online videos. These video players are invariably wrapped in all sorts of marketing and advertising. What moron thinks that they have to poison every conceivable piece of content with advertising? You already have me at your site and you are jamming as much advertising as you can at me. Can I just watch the damn video please?

Big media companies are idiots who are FAIL and their lunch is going to be eaten if they don’t get their shit together.